Wish that everything should come about just as it does.

If I was a nightingale I would sing like a nightingale; if a swan, like a swan. But since I am a rational creature my role is to praise God.

We ought to flee the friendship of the wicked, and the enmity of the good.

You are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be.

Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible be daily before your eyes, but chiefly death, and you win never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.

We must ever bear in mind --that apart from the will there is nothing good or bad, and that we must not try to anticipate or to direct events, but merely to accept them with intelligence.

Consider first the nature of the business in hand; then examine thy own nature, whether thou hast strength to undertake it.